Sunday, May 11, 2014

Muv-ver's Day

I have a gigantic extended Mormon family. I remember when I saw that movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" ten or so years ago and there was this scene where the protagonist tells her boyfriend, as if to brace him for something shocking, that she had SIXTEEN first cousins.

And she said this like she was setting a world record on having the most first cousins anyone has ever had in the history of the world.

I was confused. Because sixteen first cousins actually sounded like not very many. So I started counting my own. And you guys. Are you sitting down?

I have over SEVENTY first cousins. This is not a drill. This is not a joke. No, I am not confused. No I am not counting second cousins or neighbors, nor am I counting really annoying cousins twice. Although if I was counting really annoying cousins twice, I would have like 112.

I'M NOT REFERRING TO YOU, [insert cousin's name who is reading this and just got super offended]. Obviously I'm referring to those other cousins we BOTH find annoying.

How can this happen? How can I have so freaking many first cousins? I'll tell you.

Cathie is the oldest of ten children. Most of her siblings have multiple children. This gives me somewhere in the 30-something cousin range on that side of the family.

Bob is the second oldest of eight children. All of his siblings have multiple children. This gives me somewhere in the 30-something cousin range on that side of the family.

Add the Cathie cousins to the Bob cousins, carry the one, snip snap, you get over seventy.

This is all I've ever known. And as a kid, I sort of always just thought that everyone in the world probably had over seventy first cousins. As I have aged and met more people, however, I have come to discover that my family is not normal. We are freaks. We are freaks who are almost single-handedly responsible for the over-population of the entire world.

AND WE'RE SORRY! OK?! WE'LL TRY TO RECYCLE MORE!

This weekend we had one of our notorious gigantic family reunions with Cathie's side. When you add in all of the cousins' spouses and their children, plus the ten or fifteen friends that people bring for no reason at all, there ends up being somewhere around half the world's population standing in line for Cathie's spaghetti and wondering whether we're going to have to participate in any sing-alongs later.

There were so many people at this thing this weekend that there is at least a 45% chance that you were supposed to be there. 98% if you are a Mormon.

The reunion took place in a huge cabin buried deep in the mountains of southern Utah and it lasted a full weekend.

The moment I walked in, my 80-something-year-old grandmother who apparently watched the recent video of me telling about her obsession with Queen Nor on The Porch, walked straight over to me, put her finger in my face, and said, Mafia style, "you. exaggerate. A. LOT. Young man!"

I spent the next day and a half avoiding her terrifying glare until Sunday morning arrived and it was time to make what should have been a three-hour drive back to Salt Lake City.

I had driven my younger sister's car to give her a hand since Micalyne's husband wasn't able to make it and since she didn't want to make the journey alone with her two kids. Unfortunately, her children, ages four and one, began throwing up on Saturday night, heads spinning exorcist-girl style. And even more unfortunately, we awoke on Sunday morning to snowmageddon.

You guys. It is the middle of May. It shouldn't ever snow anywhere in the world ever no matter what ever. But it should ESPECIALLY not snow anywhere in the world in freaking MAY.

We slid down the mountain, screaming the whole way. Micalyne sat in the backseat with her two hysterically crying children, doing her best to calm them from their tummy aches and fear of riding through the snow.

Finally we made it to the freeway, where the blizzard blew on until we were stopped in a white-out of sorts, trapped in the middle of nowhere. We sat in place for a few hours frustrated and with terrible headaches.

My little sister Micalyne is probably one of the top five best moms in the world right now. She has this ability to be both terrifying and comforting at the same time. She's basically Cathie, except she doesn't pretend to have been attacked by an intruder with a machete just to see if she can make her 17-year-old son cry. TWICE.

But as I sat in the front seat of that car in that blizzard, watching my baby sister sit between her two children, ON MOTHER'S DAY, having been thrown up on and screamed at for the last few days, I saw a new personality emerge from my sister's tiny body that I had never seen before.

The Hulk.

Her eye twitched. She looked like at any moment she could break out of the car and run barefoot into the snow, never to be seen again.

Emrie: We're supposed to wear dresses on Muv-ver's Day. When we get home, can I put on a dress?

Micalyne: Honey. When we get home, mom is going to lock herself in a bedroom and take a twelve-day nap. Your dad is going to forever be in charge of what happens in your life. If he wants to dig out a dress for you, have at it.

47 comments:

Lmao! I LOVE YOUR SISTER. I experienced the getting puked on for mother's day a few years ago, while 7 months pregnant, while my husband had multiple 30+ page papers due. He tried to ask me if there was anything he could do at 4 am, after I'd changed the sheets for the third time that night. I may have hulked out a bit myself and hollered, "just finish the damn papers so this nightmare can end!!!!"

There's a very good chance I should have been at your family reunion then. xD Would totally not be surprised if we ended up being related, because this all sounds like another little chapter from the story of my life.

That is definitely a lot of cousins. My mom is from a family of 8 and my dad from a family of 10 and I only have 42 cousins. I always felt that was a good number of cousins but now I feel shortchanged. Although now most of my cousins are having children of their own so there is a whole new layer of cousins (second cousins? cousins once-removed?). Cousins are great to have, I feel sorry for people who don't have any or don't have many.

I have 7 cousins (2 have passed away).... I can't even fathom that many cousins. My husband has, what I thought to be a lot, and he's probably got 20-30. I don't even know how many bc anything over 10 is horrifying to me.

Ok, I'm not a Mormon, but I have 30 first cousins. Probably around 50 if I count the step-cousins. I know I come from a fairly big family so I've always kind of wondered how many cousins people from smaller family's have. :) Thank you, Julie, for this information! I can now rest in peace. :p

My mom is the eldest of eight, so I only have thirteen cousins right now on her side (all but two are under the age of five, so we're expecting more -.-). Luckily, mum only goes to watch the existing children while their mum is delivering children, otherwise, we don't go visit usually. My dad though? Mexican, eight siblings, all native Spanish speakers, and all with too many children to count. I don't even know how to talk to them because I don't speak Spanish. >.<

I counted at least 36 first cousins. My mom is from 11 siblings, but 4 of them died without having children and we have the most kids in our family with 4. I guess they decided they all wanted little families. My dad's side has 8 siblings. I am sure I am not counting a few cousins, since there are some I haven't seen for over 20 years.

I'd say 90% of us though, live within a 30-40 mile radius of each other.

My brother's wife has no siblings and 1 cousin. I'm sure she will be in awe this year when we have the big family reunion on my dad's side. Between aunts, uncles, 1st cousins, and 2nd cousins I'm sure there will be at least 100 or more.

I have a friend who has a hundred cousins... her mom was from a family of 12 or something like that and her dad was from a family of 8. Most of them have anywhere from 5 - 14 kids. I myself only have 16. I feel like I missed out on life.

I had a tidy little family. My mom was the youngest of 3 and all of my uncle's kids live out of state, so I only interacted with my aunt's 3 kids. Three. My dad has one brother who has one child. I'm also an only child. So even with all the first cousins' kids, we can all fit into one person's not huge house for holidays. Family friends are also invited because there is *extra room*. We make up for the lack of bodies with sheer volume of voices, though, so there's that.

I say *had* because all of this changed a few months ago. We found my 69 year old dad's birth family. His birth parents are deceased, as is one brother. Turns out, my dad is the oldest of 10 full siblings and also has 2 other siblings who were adopted out (I think they are half-sibs) plus 2 or 3 step-siblings. I don't even know how many 1st cousins I have now. I have to use my family tree software to keep track of just the aunts and uncles and have yet to get all their kids added in. To say I am overwhelmed is a huge understatement. So far I've met 6 of my 'new' aunts and uncles and talked to 2 others on the phone. There's a big family event coming up where I think I'll be meeting the rest, even the out-of-staters. I'm trying to figure out how to catch something contagious that will not make me ill but will keep me from attending because I am FREAKING. OUT. They're all so very nice and I have nothing to be afraid of, I know, but so many people wanting to get to know me all at once...

So if anybody has any tips for me, I'm all ears. I'm mostly an introvert although once I'm comfortable, I come out of my shell. I can't imagine getting to a place of 'comfort' in this situation. Is there such a thing as an introvert in a huge family? My plan is to stick to one of the aunts or uncles I know already like glue and use them as a protective shield. :-)

I'll try and help you out here as much as I can as I am VERY introverted and both mine and my wife's family are very large. And I sometimes hate all the family get togethers we have to go to.

Firstly, I just wanted to say how fantastic a story this is. It's nice to hear how a family almost always wants to find each other when they are separated. I love to hear about stories like this.

Now on to the introversion. I would probably be like you, freaking out. So the best thing to do is to try and put some of it out of your mind and try living in the present. Get your mindset to think about the now and not the future. Use your 5 senses to help you out, focusing on how things feel to the touch, what something smells like, etc... it's almost like a meditation keeping yourself in the present and focusing on those sensory feelings. And try to do some alone things right before the get together. It will help you to recharge your batteries and get prepped for the big todo. Try and find something that you like to do by yourself, and do it alone. Introverts like us, once our batteries are recharged, can then handle interaction with a big group of people for a little while, then we need to recharge again, and so on and so forth. At the party, if they're extroverts, just let them do all the talking. There's going to be lots of people so you can mingle around from group to group till you find someone or some small group you can relate to. If you need to, back off for a bit and get a breath of air, then come back in again.

I remember when my wife and I went to Italy to meet her aunts, uncles and cousins, and I didn't speak barely a word of Italian so my wife had to translate mostly everything, but it all worked out in the end. And my wife's aunt had us over for supper and her meal was AMAZING! Best food I've ever tasted in my life bar none. So you never know what kind of a gold mine you may find in that new family of yours. Maybe you might even find your new best friend in an aunt, uncle or cousin. Try and keep your thoughts on the positive like that. In Italy, one of my wife's younger cousin's who kind of spoke english just latched on to me like I was his older brother.

If these are nice people, like you make them sound, allow yourself to open up to them emotionally, at least a bit. It will help the experience and help you to let go of the emotions of being around so many people. And it will help you to drop your protective shield as well...at least for a while. :)

Thanks, Lee! I'm coping now by refusing to check the date of the event so I can't count down the days in...anticipation? I know it will be fine, it's just one of those things. It's at somebody's house who I don't know (another cousin, no doubt) which adds to the discomfort for me. My dad will be there and more attention should be on him, hopefully. I'll actually need to stick by him because his memory is not great and he states things as facts that he has totally wrong, LOL. And I'm not going to be chained there - when I've had enough, I can leave. No biggie. Thanks so much for responding, I'll try to do those things!

Good heck, we must be related, I've got 30-ish cousins (including a few that I believe are made up because I've never seen photographic evidence of their existence) and people think that's a lot until I tell them my dad was an only child...then they stare at me like I've grown a second head.

My three children have over seventy cousins, too! Although 55+ of them come from one side only. (the "+" is because we still aren't sure if they've all been accounted for, yet, since one of my husband's brothers sowed a LOT of wild oats in his youth). So, if your family are freaks, then we are all freaks together!

There is the Mother of the Year award I was talking about! Thank you! And for your information I did go in my room, lock the door and hand off the kids to Andy. Who knows what happened but they are still alive so that's good!

I hear ya. My in-laws include a family of seven sons, all now with their sets of multiple kids, and grandkids, AND a Mormon uncle-in-law with lots of kids, who married and had lots more kids. So anytime we have "a few of the family" over for dinner, it's never less than like 40 PEOPLE, PRETTY MUCH EVER. We so get the Greek Wedding reference...There is no such thing as a small family gathering, for us.

This is so funny because while Micalyne was being "The Hulk" in your car, Kaylee, Kamree, Jace, and Kate were watching "The Hulk" in our car right in front of you!!! Maybe our car was sending hulk vibes back to her. Also, the eye twitching runs in the family (speaking from an experienced eye twitcher).

ELI, WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME WE WERE HAVING A FAMILY REUNION THIS WEEKEND? I WOULD'VE COME!

At any rate, I've been to a family reunion like that. Mine all take place up in Kaysville. I swear, it's like my family practically populates the whole town, there's so many of them living there! Seriously, just an impromptu, oh a bunch of you from out of town are coming in, let's get together! reunion garners 70 of us. All told, and this is just one quarter of my family, if everyone showed up, there'd be 200 of us. I WANT EVERYONE WEARING NAME TAGS.

Wow! My parents are both one of 3 siblings. I have 3 cousins on my mom's side, and 4 on my dad's side, for a total of 7. My husband only has one first cousin... his dad is an only child and his mom's sister had one kid. I'm pretty close to my 7 cousins and he is close to his 1 cousin... are you friends with any of your gazillion cousins? I can imagine your family reunions are fun and crazy!

Love this because I help my 2nd grade granddaughter with her math homework every night. But I get confused because she calls it regrouping instead of carrying. I only have 18 1st cousins and I'm Mormon so I kind of feel left out. But I'm sure I have thousands of 2nd and 3rd cousins and my mother know all of them and everything about them.

I feel short-changed. I only have two first-cousins even though my mom has 3 sisters and my dad has 2 brothers. And neither of my cousins are nice. Everytime we see them we spend the whole time doing whatever they choose to do. Can I borrow some of your cousins? I will even take an annoying one